Category: Philosophy

“Listen, we have three eligible ladies here looking to find Mr. Right and heeeeere they are,” he spoke as he swung an arm wide towards them.

“Bachelorette Number One comes to us from Hell’s Kitchen, New York. She’s a dominatrix by day and…a dominatrix by night. Say hello to Madame Lilith!” An overhead light shone to reveal a leather clad brunette in head-to-toe black leather and zippers.

“Contestant Number Three is from Des Moines, Iowa. She sings in her church choir and feeds the homeless when she’s not getting straight A’s in college, say hello to Faith Goodwill.” A light shone down from above to illuminate a pale skinned, blue-eyed coed with a bobbed blonde coif.

“And that’s all I can tell you about our bachelorettes. Our bachelor today, who’s been kept offstage in a sound-proof booth is a man who needs no introduction. You know him as Ol’ Scratch, Beelzebub, the Adversary, the Devil himself; he’s hot, he’s horny, ladies and gentlemen, Lucifer!”

A tall, dark-skinned figure with white horns and red eyes wearing a smoking jacket trotted out from backstage. The host went to shake Lucifer’s hand, thought the better of it, and instead gestured for Lucifer to take a seat.

“Okay, Lucifer, we have three ladies who you’ll be questioning, of course. Your job is to select the lady you’d like to go on a date with based on her answers to your questions. Right, let’s start with hellos and hear what they sound like. Bachelorette Number One can you say ‘hello’?”

The dominatrix’s voice cut hard like someone had swiped the air with cold, hard steel. “Hello, Lucifer.”

The young lady looked sideways while trying to force a smile. “I shouldn’t be here?”

“Wonderful!” the host piped. “Lucifer, fire away.”

“Careful what you wish for,” the bachelor whispered low.

The loathsome figure’s voice was almost effeminate though he belched embers. “Bachelorette Number One; I’m usually the one who spoils everyone’s good time. How are you going to make sure I don’t have a good time on our date?” he read off his note cards.

“First, Lucifer,” her voice whipped, “I’m going to squeeze you into a tight leather straight jacket, turn the thermostat up as high as it’ll go to make you sweat, then chain you to the floor and lash you with a cat-o-nine tails until you drown in your own blood. After you’ve paid for dinner, of course.”

“Oo,” Lucifer rose in his chair and turned towards the host, “I might actually like that.” The host simply smiled.

“Bachelorette Number Two,” Lucifer continued, “People think I spend lavishly when I’m actually quite frugal. How are you going to make sure I spend my money on our date?”

“Oh, Lucifer, sweetie,” a Southern baby voice chirped, “I’m going to dress very scantily so you’ll think I’m…ovulating. Then I’m going to have you take me to the casino’s roulette wheel and tell you to keep betting on red while I stroke your big, hard, throbbing…chest,” Candy smoldered, heaving her bosom at the camera. “Then I’m going to slip you a mickey, take your cash and max out your credit cards, then tell you what a good time we had drinking too much last night.”

“Been there,” Lucifer said quietly with raised eyebrows. He nodded and shifted his weight in his chair. “Bachelorette Number Three, what’s the worst thing you want to do that you’ve never done?”

“Well,” Faith started, “There’s another girl in my church choir, Autumn, who usually stands behind me. She likes to poke me in the back during difficult passages and tries to sing over me all the time. Sometimes I think about spiking her Hydroflask with Drano?” Faith winced. “I know that’s terrible! I saw it in a movie once I wasn’t even supposed to be watching. It’s just a daydream. I’m sorry!”

“No, no, no,” Lucifer chimed. He leaned forward in his chair. “Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun, you know, when you’re doing something you know you shouldn’t but you do it anyway. Let me ask you another question.”

The host stepped towards the bachelor and gestured towards the ladies. “Lucifer, wouldn’t you like to ask all of them more questions?” Lucifer snapped his fingers and the host disintegrated into a cloud of ash. The smell of charred beef and earthy tweed blew through the studio and out a stage door that opened itself.

“Bachelorette Number Three – and I’m sorry if this question’s a little more philosophical than you’re used to – why do you think good girls like bad boys so much?”

Faith popped up. “Oh, that’s easy! Every good girl wants to be responsible for reforming a bad boy. If we get a bad boy to accept Jesus, we’ve done the Lord’s work.” The coed deflated then; the wind seemed to come out of her sails. She continued half-heartedly.

“But once they’ve reformed the bad boy, there’s no more work to do. So we dump them for another bad boy. The Lord’s work is never done,” she finished with her head bowed, eyes shut, clutching the gold cross around her neck.

The Devil’s work is never done either, Lucifer thought. He turned his palms up and shrugged his shoulders.

“Yeah, but what if the bad boy is so vain he can’t be redeemed?” the bachelor asked.

“No one is beyond redemption. Anyone can resist temptation with the proper application of love,” Faith stated matter-of-factly. Madame Lilith reached across the middle contestant to whip Faith on the leg with her riding crop.

“Give it a break, Goody Two Shoes,” she snarled.

“Ladies, I’m sorry, I’ve already made my choice,” Lucifer stood up. Two of the bachelorettes pouted. “Time to freshen things up a bit.” The eligible man rubbed his hands together and brought them to his temples as he closed his eyes.

“Madame Lilith, you’re providing a valuable service and I look forward to you working for me in the future. In about ten years in fact. Candy, as a credit analyst, you’re such a cliché where I come from, you’re probably going to wind up under Madame Lilith’s heel. Can’t see I’m not looking forward to that. That leaves Bachelorette Number Three, Faith, who is my clear favorite today. Faith, would you like to come say hello?”

The normally bubbly young lady grimaced as she slid off her chair. She took short steps, not eager to round the divider. As soon as she saw Lucifer, her face scrunched up.

“If I were a lesser man, my feelings would be hurt,” Lucifer said. “But don’t worry about it, I get that reaction all the time.”

“Oh, it’s not that,” Faith swayed, “It’s just that I was expecting something more like that really hot guy on that TV show, Lucifer.”

I should’ve never signed that contract, Lucifer grumbled in his head.

“You’re not really going to make me go on a date with you, are you?” Faith asked. “I was tricked into coming on the show by some girls in the choir.” The coed’s eyes lit up when in an attempt to feign something she’d realized earlier; that the campaign had probably been led by Autumn, that bitch. And, more than that, it was probably Lucifer who put the idea in Autumn’s head.

“Of course I am, little lady. When you sign on the dotted line, the deal is sealed. Don’t worry. It won’t be that bad. I’ll be a perfect gentleman…which you know is a lie but we’ll take it slow, I promise. Damn, another lie. Sorry,” Lucifer smiled through gnarly, sharp teeth.

“Oh, okay then. Father O’Shea always says to stand by your decisions.” Faith dropped her shoulders and began to saunter off with her date.

When I first heard the Joker movie with Jaoquin Phoenix was being made, I admit I was disturbed in the slightest. Critics of pop culture have long criticized what has seemed like a gradual and unnecessary decent into what seems like an anything-goes mentality for entertainment’s sake. The inundation of sex, drugs, and violence in pop culture appears to be on one hand merely for the sake of titillation. Yet, on the other hand it may be a reflection of the Western world’s dark underbelly it seems the average citizen doesn’t want to concede exists nor accept their explicit or implicit role in.* It is, however, the glorification of the villain that has troubled me the most when it comes to pop culture. I can name countless movies, not to mention countless musical artists, whose villains and villainy outshine their protagonists.

[*Perhaps the same can be said for the world at large.]

To be clear, I prefer my villains to be complicated, for their motivations to be more than evil simply because that’s who the villain cannot help being. Certainly, the new Joker movie is a reflective character analysis in this regard. Even the long string of Marvel movies were part of a story arc that centered around stopping a ‘mad’ Titan, Thanos, from wiping out half the life in the universe. His murderous methods aside – which we assume are wrong – it’s difficult to say what’s wrong with Thanos’ motivations for those of you who are aware of them. I think it’s fair to want interesting villains – the world is not black-and-white after all – but we’ve reached the point where in America’s culture at least, we’re literally rooting for the bad guy.

Case in point; at last night’s WWE’s Hell In A Cell Pay-per-View (I apologize for still keeping tabs on professional wrestling at my age), a character called The Fiend did not win the championship match and fans in the audience were audibly upset. This Fiend character is very popular among the internet wrestling community to the point that fans would rather see him crowned champion than have a face (good guy) retain the gold. I agree that the character is interesting and that the heel (bad guy) needs to win on occasion to maintain the delicate and eternal dance between good and evil alive for the sake of storytelling, but for a crowd to nearly riot when the heel doesn’t win indicates something is possibly wrong with either the Western psyche, the current rules of society, or perhaps a matter of definitions. (It is possibly all of these.) I point to actual current events to make my case.

The election of Donald Trump to President of the United States in 2016 couldn’t make my point clearer, being of the opinion that Donald Trump is clearly a villain. Why; what has he done that is so wrong? I could name a number of things and not be nearly exhaustive: Asking foreign powers to interfere in U.S. elections, accepting the word of despots over his own intelligence community, cavorting with said same despots, backing out of treaties with traditional allies and treating them with contempt, rolling back environmental and civil protections, coddling white supremists and stoking xenophobia, ignoring the U.S. Constitution (this is perhaps because he’s clearly never read it), embezzling from his charities, doing nothing about gun violence, and generally acting like a third-grade schoolyard bully. While I understand the frustration of many modern American voters with the federal government, I was aghast to find out a large swath of the U.S. thought Donald Trump was the answer. In my opinion, I can’t say Donald Trump has never done any good as U.S. president – even a broken clock is right twice a day by accident – but does the good outweigh the bad? No, because all things considered, the person in question wouldn’t be a villain. Inevitably, then, we’re forced to think about what exactly makes someone a villain.

What is a villain? The definition of ‘villain’ is broad throughout various dictionaries, meaning anything from the antithesis of the protagonist in fiction to generally someone doing harm to others in reality. In either case, a villain is typically breaking the law. They are considered dangerous or have behaved heinously towards any given person or group of people. A villain is often considered immoral, and therein lies a problem.

To some people, Donald Trump is a hero, a freedom fighter even. He is a protagonist to all those who feel they’ve been ignored, stepped on, or otherwise aggrieved by the federal government. The current president of the U.S. doesn’t play by the established laws, traditions, or unwritten social contract. This makes him a terrorist to some (in that word’s broadest sense) and a hero to others who feel that the current laws, traditions, and unwritten social contract need to be revised or reset to reflect some unspecified glory somewhere in America’s history. (Possible interpretation: When they felt more entitled.) So if a villain can also be a hero, there must either be something wrong with our definition or perhaps there is no such thing as a villain, objectively speaking.

It’s easy to contend there is something wrong with the definition. Scores of English words are too broad in their definition to be of much use or are outright confusing; ask anyone studying the English language. I contend that in modern U.S. culture, the definition of ‘villain’ is so ambiguous as to be vague to the point that many people would not know when they are behaving as a villain. (I’m not sure which is worse, a villain who knows they’re a villain or one who doesn’t know they’re a villain.) It also seems wrong to label anyone who offends us or that we simply don’t like as a villain, but that does seem to be the manner in which many Americans now operate.

Do villains exist, objectively speaking? Not if all cultures are relative, something we have to assume if not all cultures can agree that murder is wrong. (There’s always a caveat.) Villains can exist within a given culture, certainly, as there is no doubt that people have existed that have flouted the laws of a society they are seemingly a part of. Again, though, this allows a villain to be a hero to society’s downtrodden or anyone outside of a society that would like to see that society fail. So it’s hard to say villains actually exist anymore than we can now say heroes exist. Now we can see that heroes merely prop up the rules of society, and this would make them villains in someone’s eyes somewhere.

My original feelings towards the Joker movie have to be misgiven. After all, what does his nemesis Batman do but prop up the rules in Gotham City? Imagine Batman having grown up in 1930’s Germany; what would he have been but a Nazi superhero come WWII? Thank goodness he’s not, but Batman must be seen as a villain by some law enforcement agencies; there are procedures for catching and detaining criminals and subsequently putting them on trial. When this sense of fairness is broken can we agree this is something villainous? In the Joker movie, the central figure that is Arthur Fleck is driven insane by a thousand unfair psychological cuts, so can we blame him for the anarchy that ensues? Can we blame a mass shooter who goes on a rampage because they think they’ve been treated unfairly?

Hopefully you are saying ‘yes’ because you agree that murdering innocent people, people who have not directly affected the shooter, are being murdered and we have to agree this is wrong no matter what society we belong to. Breaking two fairness rules – making two wrongs – does not result in a right, correct? Unfortunately, any given mass shooter or lawbreaker will have sympathizers. (To say nothing of laws that should be broken either because they are apparently unethical or quite ridiculous.) It would make more sense for a mass shooter to only kill the people that have affected them assuming the punishment fits the crime against them and we’ve never seen that.

If we invoke this rule of fairness which we, Western culture, seem to have forgotten as of late it might be easier to gauge who the villains are when the doctrine of fairness is broken. Given the current impeachment inquiry regarding Donald Trump, his proponents can argue for an investigation into the Bidens ad nauseum, and I’d be okay with that, but so should there just as well be an investigation into Trump. The fact that Donald trump obstructs justice in a manner that most of us cannot violates the fairness doctrine. I think it therefore reasonable to construe him as a villain. Then again, his proponents see this ‘unfair’ characterization as exactly what’s wrong with current American culture (despite these same people not wanting to do anything about solving the problem of mass shootings, which I view as villainous). I can’t imagine asking a Donald Trump supporter what they think made Obama such a villain because it seems like their definition is going to wind up being arbitrary. In fairness, though, I am willing to hear them out. Villains on the other hand hear no one out and simply assume they are entirely in the right.

There’s never one around when you need it. Moreover, heaven only knows how you’re going to get your hands on anything other than a black or blue one when it really matters. Do pen manufacturers not make that many red pens? When you take into account all the corrections we put to paper, you’d think red pens would be the third most popular choice. But it seems there is a red ink shortage. Is the ink made from the blood of babies and this is apparently unethical? If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s don’t leave a red pen lying around because someone WILL take it. WHO IS STEALING ALL THE PENS? Someone, somewhere has A LOT of pens.

I know you know what I’m talking about. Ever notice that no matter how many pens you put out – on your desk, in a pen holder, chained to a brick – all of them will disappear? If it isn’t a single person taking all the pens then there should still be an equal distribution of pens throughout the world. Sometimes when I go swimming in the ocean I half expect to find a cache not far from shore. Alas, nothing. Honey, do you know where I can find a pen? I ask. Yes, she says, With the missing sock that was eaten by the dryer. Where are all the pens? They’re there when you don’t need them, of course.

The less you need a pen the more likely you are to see one. And how many you see rises in direct proportion to how little you need one. When I’m using Microsoft Word on my laptop, I can see anywhere from 5-10 pens from where I’m sitting. As soon as I reach for a pad of paper, though, they suddenly disappear or at least make themselves scarce. For instance, if I didn’t need a pen and saw one on the kitchen counter, the moment I reached for a piece of paper the pen would instantaneously travel through a wormhole into another room. Pens allegedly reside with us in the macro-sized world but they behave like they are both there and not there in a state of quantum flux. I don’t know why Schrödinger used a cat in his famous thought experiment; he should have used a pen. If pens are not disappearing on their own, we have to go back to assuming it’s a people problem.

If it is indeed a people problem, how long has this been going on? Was this a problem when people were still using an ink well and a quill? It seems like all that equipment would be too hard to steal; not worth the effort. I understand how easy it is to swipe a modern pen, on the other hand. Only…why? What is one’s motivation for swiping another person’s pen? Obviously, whatever one we had disappeared so we must obtain a new one by whatever means necessary in case we suddenly find ourselves signing the deed to a new home. Or perhaps the pen we’ve taken has the name of a Chinese restaurant we haven’t tried yet on it, and we need to remember the restaurant’s name. (We could’ve written the name down with the pen but taking the pen itself is WAY easier.) At least I hope these are possible explanations and not that these random pen thieves are taking pens as some deep-rooted and unconscious desire to make others suffer.

I think we should either start making so many pens that’s it’s impossible for one not to be in any given room at any time or we should stop making them altogether. I know it’s difficult to resolve world hunger but this seems like something we should be able to get a handle on. This madness needs to stop.

“What if we’re living in a simulation, Adama?” Eva asked, sliding the hookah back towards her boyfriend. “What if we’re something like The Sims, doing only what our programs allows us as our ancestors try to get a better idea how their forefathers lived? Or what if we’re a holographic projection, sort of like shadows of Plato’s forms?”

“I hate it when you get bombed, girl,” Adama responded. “How would any of those things being reality change how you live? If you’re a simulation, you could only do what your programing allows. You’d be bound by the limits of the world laid out for you. You’d never escape the simulation, so what does it matter?”

Eva frowned and reached for the hookah since her boyfriend waved it off. The haze that clothed the upper half of the room’s atmosphere seemed to be enough for him.

“Don’t you think any potential programmer would have a moral obligation to create the best possible world for us?” Eva pondered before making the hookah gurgle.

“Do you think that’s what people do when they play The Sims? No, that’s boring. The program dictates you make them find jobs, dates – all the same things we do, I guess for the sake of doing something.” Adama leaned back on the couch and tilted his head up. The hazy air slipped into his nostrils like a gentle brook.

“You’d be lucky to be an avatar in a game like The Sims,” Adama continued, talking to the ceiling. “Imagine you were in a game like Fortnite. Do those programmers live by a moral code to make the best possible world for their program’s inhabitants? Don’t think so. All the inhabitants of that world do is kill each other.”

Eva blew a cloud of smoke Adama’s way. “You don’t think our ancestors could be trying to figure out what their forefathers were like?” she said with the last remnants of air in her lungs.

“Nah,” Adama replied. “Our records are pretty good going back to at least the turn of the twentieth century. It gets murkier the further we go back, of course, but then we’d be part of some ancient civilization and not inhabiting the twenty-first century. Assuming our records survive into the future. Even if the records didn’t, we’d just be guesses, approximations of their forefathers, and I don’t see how that would be helpful to our ancestors.”

“Okay, so what if we’re projections or afterglow of some real universe?” Eva continued. Adama was regretting talking his girlfriend into taking the Philosophy of Mind course with him at college. She only talked about the class when she got high.

“Are you saying that because we’re a projection that what we experience is somehow devalued by not being the real thing? How would we know we’re not experiencing all the same things, the same feelings, as our real selves? Whether or not it’s the reality of our situation would be pointless. Even if we were projections, how does that change anything? We wouldn’t be able to change our being projections. It wouldn’t change how we behave. We couldn’t change how we behave because only our real selves could do that, right?”

Eva looked down. “Could you smoke a little bit more, babe?”

“Eva, baby, I don’t need to alter my reality that much. I’m good right now,” Adama argued. “Why do people want so much to believe that this reality isn’t real anyway? You want to believe you’re a brain in a jar somewhere so that, what, you can escape responsibility? Find an explanation for why people can be so crazy? Believe that beyond this false reality the universe does in fact care?”

Eva was beginning to see the apple and laid back in the recliner across from Adama.

“I guess you’re right,” she said ad looked away into the recesses of darkness the apartment’s thick curtains threw. “What kind of world would our simulators be living in? Probably the same, huh? I guess it doesn’t matter if we’re simulations, holograms, or if this is as real as it gets. We can only do what we do given the laws of the universe we live in. The truth, whatever it is, doesn’t change much of anything.”

Adama leaned forward and opened his reddened eyes at Eva. “The truth isn’t even the truth. And that’s the truth. I still love you, though.”

“If that’s what either one of us want to believe,” Eva spoke into a shady corner.

…

“Is it possible for them to say that?” Dr. Amada asked his colleague about the holographic simulation.

“The parameters of their programming appear to allow for it,” Dr. Ave responded.

“What do you think it means?” was Dr. Amada’s next question.

“It confirms what we already know. It means whatever we want it to mean and that’s the truth,” Dr. Ave reminded.

“It hate that the truth is subjective,” Dr. Amada said as he reached for a modified beaker. He took a hose by its mouthpiece and puckered his lips around it.

“If the truth were objective, wouldn’t that be worse?” Dr. Ave rejoined as she waved the smoke away.

7:00am. Gilliam’s phone vibrated itself off the nightstand while the sound of the phone’s alarm steadily increased. He rolled over towards his side of the bed and reached for his phone with no luck. It was still dark and he could turn on the lamp but he didn’t want to risk anything else waking Celia. They’d been up most of the night talking, a conversation Gilliam kept going at all cost in case The Moment should occur – that awkward pause where the next thing you say isn’t said at all but still required your lips. And The Moment had indeed occurred. Gilliam waited eight years for it, since they were fifteen. So much anticipation, the thunderbolt of The Moment’s arrival had electrified his entire being so thoroughly, he was exhausted after their first kiss.

The young man’s hand eventually found the phone and silenced the ringer before it could wake Celia. Now the choice was whether to go to work and he was thinking he would not. Gilliam rolled himself back towards Celia who was laying on her side and facing the other way. He spooned up behind her and draped an arm over her. As he breathed in the scent of her hair, he thought, This is the best of all possible universes.

7:00am. Gilliam’s phone vibrated itself off the nightstand while the sound of the phone’s alarm steadily increased. He rolled over towards his side of the bed and reached for his phone with no luck. It was still dark and he could turn on the lamp but he didn’t want to risk anything else waking Celia’s friend, Questa. They’d been up most of the night talking about their mutual friend, a conversation Gilliam had tried at all cost to end in case The Moment should occur – that awkward pause where the next thing you say isn’t said at all but still required your lips, just to fill the void. Fortunately, The Moment eluded them, perhaps because Questa knew Gilliam would never truly be hers because of Celia. Gilliam’s been waiting for Celia for eight years for it, since the two were fifteen. With little fanfare, the two had drifted off to sleep in Gilliam’s bed, after Questa solidified a plan for Gilliam to secure Celia’s affections.

The young man’s hand eventually found the phone and silenced the ringer before it could wake Questa. There was no choice but to go to work now. Gilliam rolled himself back towards Questa who was laying on her side and facing the other way. He spooned up behind her, gave her a respectful peck on the cheek, and whispered, Thank you. As he gently rose out of bed, he thought, This will be the best of all possible universes.

7:00am. Gilliam’s phone vibrated itself off the nightstand while the sound of the phone’s alarm steadily increased. He rolled over towards his side of the bed and reached for his phone with no luck. It was still dark and he could turn on the lamp but he didn’t want to risk anything else waking Celia’s friend, Questa. They’d been up most of the night talking about their mutual friend, a conversation Gilliam had tried at all cost to end in case The Moment should occur – that awkward pause where the next thing you say isn’t said at all but still required your lips, just to fill the void. And The Moment had indeed occurred, despite Questa knowing Gilliam would never truly be hers because of Celia. Gilliam’s been waiting for Celia for eight years for it, since the two were fifteen. But Questa couldn’t help herself; it was Celia’s fault after all for speaking about how wonderful Gilliam was despite Celia’s own boyfriend. After much physical affection, the two had drifted off to sleep in Gilliam’s bed, after Questa destroyed a plan for Gilliam to secure Celia’s affections.

The young man’s hand eventually found the phone and silenced the ringer before it could wake Questa. He wanted to rush off to work and figure out a way to excuse what had happened last night. Maybe there was a way to still be with Celia, some day. Gilliam rolled himself away from Questa who was laying on her side and facing the other way. He rose slowly from the bed and cursed himself under his breath. He thought, This can’t be the worst of all possible universes.

7:00am. Gilliam’s phone vibrated itself off the nightstand while the sound of the phone’s alarm steadily increased. He rolled over towards his side of the bed and reached for his phone with no luck. It was still dark and he could turn on the lamp but he didn’t want to risk something blinding the memory of a dream he’d just had. In his dream he’d been up all night talking with Celia, a friend he’d fallen in love with and he’d kept the conversation going at all cost in case The Moment should occur – that awkward pause where the next thing you say isn’t said at all but still required your lips. And The Moment had indeed occurred. Gilliam waited eight years for it, since they were fifteen. So much anticipation, the thunderbolt of The Moment’s arrival had electrified his entire being so thoroughly, he was exhausted after their first kiss. In the dream they fell asleep together shortly thereafter.

The young man’s hand eventually found the phone and silenced the ringer. Now it was time to go to work when all Gilliam wanted to do was linger with the memory of the dream a bit more. Then he thought it didn’t matter; Celia had announced her engagement to her boyfriend of three years last night. The dream faded with his rise out of the bed and the young man couldn’t help but think, I hope there is a universe in which we are together.

“Why should I let you live?” That’s what he asked everyone at the end of his pistol.

Grimore never thought about what it was like to answer the question under duress. All he knew was that if it were him – beaten, bloodied, on his knees with a gun in his face – his answer to the question would be, “You shouldn’t.” Not because he would avenge the situation; he wouldn’t. His question was philosophical and if you didn’t have a philosophical answer this wasn’t good enough in Grimore’s head.

The question was not his to answer, not today. Today the question fell to another Survivor, someone else scratching out a bare-bones existence on their scorched earth. This man’s name…his name was irrelevant less Grimore was given reason to remember it. So Grimore asked the man again.

“It’s important,” Grimore said, “Tell me why I should let you live.”

The man looked up from his knees down the barrel of the gun through the dirt and blood that marred his existence. He was exhausted having left his shelter a week ago, scavenging for scraps for his family when Grimore caught him off guard. The man had been hit in the face from out of the shadows and kicked mercilessly until he’d been pulled to his knees by his scraggly hair.

Grimore had always waited patiently in places like this, convenience stores, knowing that although everything had been pilfered by now someone would eventually come along hoping that something was still left. Grimore, he was all that was left, a vulture waiting for the scraps of humanity searching for scraps of sustenance.

Fear, hunger, exposure to the elements – the man was quivering as Grimore pressed the gun to his forehead. Though his eyes were fixated on the gun his ear picked up Grimore’s voice softening. Maybe he had reached delusion. Maybe Grimore is what you see when it’s already too late.

“I don’t want to kill you. I need you to answer the question,” Grimore sighed. He sounded bored, the sound of inevitability.

The man tried to wet his tongue with what little water was left in his body. He looked down, then up, then down again. “I…I have a family. I have a wife, a son, and a daughter. They’re counting on me to bring some food back.”

“So they can starve a week from now? A month? A year?” The man could see Grimore squint at his from underneath a weathered flat-brimmed hat. “Tell me where they are and I will help them.”

“No, you’re going to kill me,” the man cried with dirt out of his eyes.

“Not if you give me a better answer,” Grimore rejoined. “Why should I let you live?”

“If I die, my family dies, that’s why,” the man choked out.

“Do better,” Grimore grunted.

“I don’t know what you want!” the man shouted as he pressed forward into the barrel.

A shot from the pistol rang out. The man fell, and fell silent. Grimore lowered the weapon to the side of his ragged, dusted cargo pants and looked upon the fallen. “What I wanted from you was something more than survival. A want for survival is no reason to let you live. Even an insect wants to live. What did you think you were going to do with the life I spared you?”

The disheveled traveler holstered the gun on his hip. Drawing a knife from his boot, he took the tip and etched another fine line into his belt. 213 Survivors, he thought. Grimore never remembered their names – he hardly ever asked – he just remembers how many. How many here on Earth, that is; he didn’t add those 213 to the exactly one-point-three billion he killed when he sabotaged The Womb.

Grimore knelt beside number 213 and patted him down; a few rusty knives and a revolver whose barrel was so dirty it probably would have misfired had the man tried to use it. There was only two rounds in it anyway so unless the man were a good shot… There were four cans of long expired beans in the man’s backpack. He also found a map in the man’s back pocket, a map that carelessly noted the man’s way back home to his family, assuming he hadn’t lied about them. Grimore would check it out. Whomever he found there, Grimore would ask them The Question, too, Why should I let you live? If he didn’t like what he heard, well…

Only two people had ever given him an answer to his satisfaction. Someone recently, upon realizing Grimore was going to kill them, asked what gave Grimore the right; what gave Grimore the right to kill anyone when there were so few people left? His immortality, he’d tell them. He wasn’t really immortal, of course, but his nanobots made him seem that way. They made efficient use of all nutrients, recycled waste in his body, and healed him quickly. It was a long involuntary life, the often overlooked curse of demi-godhood. When the time came, when he’d hunted down the last human, he’d find a way to break the curse. In the meantime, his victims will sometimes accuse him of entertaining himself, of having the nerve to play god.

The rag-tag hunter looked up at the rusted sky. Sand pelted his face went a wind kicked up and wound its way through the store’s broken window.

They brought this upon themselves, went his inner dialogue, They separated themselves from nature and each other, never understanding the necessity to survival of acting as one. They raped and murdered the planet then thought they could throw it away like any other piece of trash with no fear of consequence. Humanity thought they would walk away from their crime scot-free. They do not see, gods do not entertain themselves, they judge.

Grimore took three cans of beans from 213 and put them in his own satchel. The fourth can he opened with an old-school army tool; the smell was off. He slung the beans back down his throat anyway as if he were finishing of a tankard of beer.

“You are now and always will be my friend, Aston, no matter what happens,” Mercedes soothed. “No matter what happens, I know in your heart that you’re one of us.” The words streamed off the raven-haired beauty’s tongue like a gentle brook.

Aston wasn’t convinced. And the lithe hand on his shoulder might as well be making things worse, not better. They weren’t kids anymore; they were nineteen now and had to register for the Lottery last year in accordance with their laws. Now that that they were entered, well, what if he won? Could they really remain friends?

“Excuse me while I worry anyway, ‘Sadie,” Aston muttered as he shook the young woman’s delicate hand off his shoulder. His fine blonde hair whipped on the wind as he skewed his chiseled jaw.

“Two babies were born last year and only one person died,” Aston continued in his crisp English. “Of course there’d wind up having to be a Lottery this year, just one year after we registered. What are the odds? Dammit.”

“It’s the price we pay to live the way we do. You know that,” Mercedes confirmed as she stroked her diamond necklace. She replaced her hand on Aston’s shoulder and turned him about with all her meager strength. She stared wide-eyed into his.

And the young man was soothed. Those clueless, doe-wide brown eyes of hers; they always got him. She just believed in it so much. His beliefs weren’t quite on the same level.

“I suppose,” Aston relented a touch. “At least your ex, Jaguar, is in it, too.” Aston never liked Mercedes’ ex, at least not since the pair hooked up about this time last year just when Aston began to have feeling for Mercedes. Mercedes and Jaguar broke up shortly afterwards, Mercedes saying they had different perspectives on things though she never said exactly what the difference was. “A good twist of fate will see to it that he wins,” the nineteen year old said dryly.

“Spoken like a gentleman,” Mercedes nodded softly.

Did she even hear me or is she actually that stupid? the young fair-haired man wondered. He didn’t really know why they were friends or why he liked her so much. Maybe she was the necessary antidote to his intellectually induced pessimism. Ignorance is bliss, after all. Or maybe it was biology; they were both young and hot. But then so was most everyone in their community. Aston turned back around towards the stage and tried concentrating on determining the future.

“There he is! The minister is approaching the podium,” Aston popped. He reached back to grab Mercedes’ hand and nearly crushed it with equal parts fear and excitement. She winced, then smiled, then brought her lips near Aston’s ear while the baby-faced officiant took up the stage.

“Aston, have you thought about what will happen if I win? Will you still be my friend?” Mercedes was forced to step back as Aston shooed her with both hands and said something like ‘sure, sure.’ His ambivalence went unnoticed by the young beauty’s naivety. She shrank back as the minister approached the microphone. Aston rose to his tippy toes and obscured Mercedes’ view.

“Bugatti Venyon…” the priest dribbled.

Aston’s fist rocketed into the sky, self-preservation assured. Best tp lay the part at any rate. “Wooo! Yeah! Bugatti! Get out of here you miserable slumdog!”

Aston’s theatrics were infectious to the point of violence. The prim-and-proper crowd of elitists began to boo and hiss like snakes. Like wolves, they began tearing at the tuxedo of the man whose name was announced.

The minister raised his hands simultaneously and scowled. “Settle down! Everyone settle down! Mr. Venyon forgot to sign his Agreement to Disperse Property form, that’s all. Settle down!” Aston and the crowd slacked back, fixed their ties and smoothed their dresses. Everyone raised their eyebrows and shrugged their shoulders at each other. No big deal.

Mr. Venyon, checking a scratch across his cheek with a white handkerchief, approached the stage, signed the form handed to him by the minister and settled back into the crowd, his eyes leery of his neighbors.

“Alright then,” the minister said as he placed the form on top of a large stack beside him on a table, “Let’s get on with the business at hand.” The smooth-faced magistrate reached into a bowl, whirled his hand, then quickly withdrew a folded strip of paper. He unfolded it, squinted, confirmed the name with the priestess beside him and approached the microphone once more. The crowd before him was silent, their mouths gaped like fish with hook in mouth.

Aston spun around to find his best friend pale as a ghost. Her arms were folded across her chest and her chin brought low. “Aston?” she barely spoke. “You’ll still be my friend, right?” her broken voice and crooked brow asked. “You could come visit me. It’s allowed.”

He was trying to stare into her eyes but her eyes were closed to the dark energy reaching out to grab her, assail her, to reject her. In Aston’s peripheral vision, a score of hands emerged to blot out the sun. A sack of coal lodged in his stomach while his mind scrambled for something to say.

His thoughts were interrupted by the clarity of a memory though, of him sitting at his desk at home in the early evening with an ancient quill and ink well, spokes of sunlight piercing the thin white drapes, drafting his high school graduation essay on why the lottery should be abolished. The lottery wasn’t fair – an accident of birth landed the citizens of this community in their privileged society. So what if everyone agreed to participate? The choice not to got you sent off to the slums anyway. Who wouldn’t agree to stay? Then there was the matter of all people being created equal…

The lad remembered dotting the final sentence of his essay by driving the wet quill through the paper. Aston remembered staring at the essay for a long time after that, until well after the sun went down. Alone in a dark room, he carefully shredded the paper into small pieces. He tore it so slowly he could hardly hear it. He had to be gentle with the essay. Aston imagined there was a time ideas were respected and not blindly followed. As he swept the paper bits out his window onto a light breeze, a metal taste swept through the young man’s mouth when he realized his cowardice. He couldn’t blindly follow his own ideas, could he? At least he could defy them all somehow with littering.

Mercedes’ whimpers stirred Aston. Fingers, claws, were inches from her, ready to cast the lady down. Aston swelled with adrenaline; he knew he was strong enough. He could fight them off; break their fingers, rend their claws, frighten them into backing down. Only he’d never actually been in a fight, not one of them have. There was no fighting here; that’s what the poor did. Violence was reserved to give notice to those who’ve been outcast, to let them know they were unwelcome now. Those were the rules and they made sense to Aston, insofar as the lottery could make sense.

Aston, an unusual boy, saw his action potential stymied by his need to reason, to think things through. He saw it was too late to save Mercedes who – clawed dress and all – was hoisted above the seething crowd. This was the rule, there were no except…

“Proxy!” Aston shouted as loud as he could. The crowd froze and craned their necks back in the young man’s direction. “The rules state a proxy can take the winner’s place.” He said this knowing this had never happened before; no one had ever brought it up.

No one made a sound; not Mercedes, not the crowd. Everyone just kind of looked at each other. One man, almost 35 and soon too old enough for ritual death, finally broke the still. “Are you saying that you want to take her place?” he asked politely.

Aston stammered. “I…I’m just saying that’s the rule. I…” Mercedes, high is the air, hung her head upside down and shot her big brown eyes at him, wider than ever. Her mouth lingered just a touch open, waiting for her friend to come through. “It’s just that…that’s the rule. It’s a thing. I just wanted to remind everyone of that.” Mercedes’ eyes went super-moon as the crowd erupted.

“I will proxy for her!” a suave young Hispanic man with short, shaggy black hair roared. Not an ounce of fat on him, Jaguar’s muscles rippled from out his unbuttoned shirt. The conviction in his voice was as tall as he was. Mercedes was carefully placed back on her feet and the crowd lingered, thinking long about making a move on Jaguar.

“Step aside and I will leave this place quietly. None of you have to get hurt,” Jaguar spoke. The crowd parted like the Red Sea to either side of Mercedes. The Hispanic moved on air passed a dumbfounded Aston. He approached Mercedes and looked down on her, radiating love, burning her with sacrifice.

“I wouldn’t do it for you,” Mercedes whispered and turned away.

“I know, bomboncita,” Jaguar squinted. “But I could not live with the thought of you in the slums, dirty and scratching to survive. You don’t put up a fight against the rules, thinking you stand so little chance of winning the lottery and then winning anyway. Will you really go to live among those you’ve been taught to despise so that the rest of us can eat caviar? Do you know what really happens out there? You grow old if you are lucky, bombon, but if you are lucky you will lose your sweetness. I could not bear that in my heart. Besides, you know how I feel. I will still be the same man out there as I am here. Everyone is created equal no matter where you are from. Out there I will die with honor. Here, I cannot go into ritual death having never stood up for what is right.”

Aston throat burned with acid. Jaguar was taller, more muscular and better looking, and he’d slept with Mercedes. In what other damn ways could Jaguar be superior to him? Jaguar could love. Jaguar could sacrifice. All this superiority was intolerable.

“No! I will proxy for Mercedes,” Aston announced stepping towards the former lovers.

“Nooo,” Jaguar immediately lulled. “I do not think you will survive out there for long. I am stronger. I will do it. For Mercedes.”

“I, Aston Martin, will proxy for Mercedes Pullman. I volunteer to go to the slums and preserve your society. There, in the slums, I will be as equal among the people as I am here.” The whole town could hear Aston rev. “I won’t have your riches, your security, but I will have a dignity you could never take away from me!”

The young minister nodded and two men grabbed Aston by his arms. They fast-tracked him towards the town gate before he could spew any more nonsense. Jaguar winked at the hero and patted his shirt pocket as he was dragged by causing Aston’s face to curdle. With one hand around Mercedes’ waist, Jaguar’s other hand lifted a folded and heavily taped paper from the pocket and kissed it. Aston’s heart hollowed out. His head throbbed for an explanation. Thrown into the dirt outside the town’s gate he finally figured it out: Jaguar was smarter than him, too.

As Aston staggered away he thought he could hear Mercedes’ angelic voice. “You’re the best friend I ever had. You’re still my best friend.” Maybe she’d come visit him in the slums. Would Mercedes waste what little time 37 years gave her though? He wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t.